Perhaps you are dealing with cancer. Or your family member or friend has the disease. For people confronting this challenge, the focus often moves away from LBC (Life Before Cancer) to the group of overwhelming yet not unyielding cancerous cells. Research, doctor’s appointments, treatments, and diagnostic tests are important components to optimize disease management and survival. Anyone moving through a cancer journey needs the best conventional cancer care available. However, that is only part of the equation.
Providing Whole Body Care
Research studies have shown for many years that cancer grows in fertile soil, or a hospitable environment in the body, supporting cancerous cells. The internal environment of the body strongly impacts whether or not cancer will grow in each individual. With this knowledge, some cancers are understood as a symptom of an altered, unbalanced system. The focus then expands from the cancer diagnosis to also include the environmental condition of the entire physical body.
Along with receiving cancer treatments for the diagnosis and symptoms, people affected by cancer need whole person health care. This model is called integrative cancer care that provides attention to and interventions for the cancer diagnosis, the entire body, and the whole person.
Defining Integrative Cancer Care
So, what is integrative cancer care for the whole person? Integrative cancer care addresses the totality of body, mind, and spirit, including social and environmental health, for each individual. All of these aspects of your health and life are constantly interacting together, influencing one another, and interdependently shaping who you are.
Think about this concept using the example of diet. You probably know that diet impacts your physical body. At the same time, diet strongly affects how you think mentally and feel emotionally, aspects of your spirituality, how you relate to yourself and other people socially, and ways in which your environment impacts your health. No separation exists between these elements. As a living system, your body and life are compromised of a network of webs constantly connected and in communication with one another.
Along with the physical body, understanding the other dimensions of integrative cancer care provides further insights into helping women with cancer and advancing whole person health care.
Supporting Mind-Body Balance
For all human beings, the state of the mind and emotions affects health due to the mind-body connection. Research shows that no separation exists between the mind and body. The body feeds the mind; the mind feeds the body. As thoughts and feelings, as well as beliefs and attitudes, impact and literally shape aspects of biological functioning, studies indicate that mind-body approaches strengthen the mental and emotional inner life supporting health and healing.
Tending to the Spirit
Most people understand that they are connected to something larger than themselves and engage contact with spirit. There is a sense of being whole when spirit is united with the body. Since healing is about wholeness, spirituality is therefore an essential component of an integrative cancer care plan addressing the whole person.
Caring for Social Wellness
Cancer is a social issue impacting community. When cancer is in the picture, new perceptions and social experiences emerge. People dealing with cancer—patients, family members, friends—endure a range of social challenges and opportunities. Social issues that existed before cancer may also intensify during and after cancer. Learning about and providing support for social issues is a part of quality cancer care.
Addressing Environmental Health
Is there really a link between cancer and the environment? The answer is yes. Environmental carcinogens are prevalent and need to be eradicated. The National Cancer Institute refers to studies as far back as the 1960s concluding that the majority of cancers could be prevented by acting on what was known about the environmental causes of the disease. Addressing the link between cancer and the environment is central to advances in cancer risk reduction and for anyone already with cancer.
Women Improving Cancer Care
Research shows again and again that women compared to men are more proactive in caring for their health through self-responsibility and self-care. Many women instinctually understand that health is about more than one part of their body or lifestyle and instead encompasses the many dimensions of self. A woman’s beauty contains the intuitive capacity to feel and see the dimensions of life and who they are. This wisdom must be applied to cancer care and especially as studies show that integrative cancer care reduces cancer risk, improves cancer survival and quality of life. Women can also help educate and empower men to become their own health care advocates with or without cancer.
This is not casual information. Read and reflect on it thoroughly. There are too many people dying that are not receiving the level of cancer care they need and deserve. Now is the time for more widespread innovation in supporting people with cancer. Integrative cancer care is that model. Women as providers and patients are playing key roles in advancing integrative cancer care for the whole person.
Jeannine Walston is co-founder and Executive Director of EmbodiWorks, a non-profit organization at www.embodiworks.org providing integrative cancer care resources. She has extensive experience in cancer education and advocacy, health care policy, and both conventional and integrative cancer care through work in the U.S. Congress, government agencies, cancer non-profit organizations, and health care practices.